SDAFF 2025: ‘Ky Nam Inn’ Review
Note: Minor spoilers for Ky Nam Inn below.
I didn’t watch that many feel-good movies in 2025. I remember watching Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet and Yamaguchi Junta’s River, both fun romantic comedies. But when I finished Leon Le’s Ky Nam Inn, I thought to myself, “Oh, I’ve missed this.” I’ve missed the everyday rhythms of living.
Much of Ky Nam Inn is set within a bustling apartment block in post-war Saigon. Khang (Lien Binh Phat), a young translator, has just moved into 2A. Ky Nam (Do Thi Hai Yen), an older widow, runs a food delivery service out of 1A. When Ky Nam injures her wrist and is unable to cook, Khang steps in to help. Tentatively, they fall in love.
Ky Nam Inn is beautiful. It’s shot on 35mm film, rendering pinks and cream-yellows delicately washed-out, teals and scarlets richly vivid. No prop feels ornamental or staged. Look closely and you’ll notice that a woven basket hung up on the wall is taken for errands and then set aside in a corner. Later, it finds its way above a cupboard, tucked inside a compatriot red plastic basket.
The soundtrack, as well, is beautiful. It reminded me of a passage from Marie Howe’s What the Living Do. In “Without Music” Marie describes what she hears when she visits her brother, who is dying of AIDS-related complications. Marie hears, “rock and roll, oldies but goodies, / and sometimes, softly, piano music / rising from the piano teacher’s apartment on the first floor.” In Ky Nam Inn, Khang’s next-door neighbor, Hao (Van Than Le), owns an illicit record collection. Every evening, Hao plays his banned music and reads by the window. Dạ Hương and Hà Thanh’s love songs perfume the courtyard air as Khang writes.
In my apartment, a music producer used to live right under me. He’d play the same vocal run over and over and the floor would vibrate under my feet. The sounds of my apartment travelled too. Next door, our neighbors could always hear us laughing. Watching Ky Nam Inn, I was struck by how intimately neighbors are connected.
This intimacy can be annoying — even dangerous. One neighbor vandalizes Ky Nam’s apartment, scrawling, “this house organizes border crossings,” a serious accusation with the weight of “a death sentence.” Everyone is scrutinized. No one goes without notice.
…But no one goes missing either. When neighbor Hao isn’t seen all morning he’s quickly found — in his bed, having died peacefully in his sleep.
When Ky Nam inherits Hao’s record collection, she plays Hà Thanh’s “Bến giang đầu,” knowing that Khang will hear it too. A sorrowful, beautiful voice rises up from the first floor. “Through the old garden, I looked again for where we used to be. / You gave me flowers with a smile, I cried so foolishly.” In this way, the two wordlessly communicate with each other.
Ky Nam Inn is full of these meaningful, wordless gestures. The character who I came to appreciate most through his silences was Ky Nam’s surrogate son, Su, played by The Manh Tran. Su is adrift, stranded with relatives who view him a burden and bullied by classmates who view him as trash. Tran lends the character a quiet loneliness. When Su tells Ky Nam that he is leaving with another family to the US, he picks at his nail beds, looking down in anxiety. When Ky Nam takes his hand in hers, he looks up, and she smiles. It’s one of my favorite performances of the film.
Ky Nam Inn has its bitter sorrow and regret. Still, it is a hopeful movie. A neighbor who harasses another might learn to rely on her and make amends. An entire engagement party, jailed for contraband music, laugh together in their holding cell, waiting for dawn. Distrust can be bridged; it is not left to fester or grow cold. This is what the living do. This is what the living do.
4/5 ★★★★
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Ky Nam Inn was covered as part of Pacific Arts Movement’s 2025 San Diego Asian Film Festival.